I am not one for negative posting but sometimes I have to vent. This is one of those days! :) Here are my top 5 social media gripes … for today:

Rants about who is and is not a social media expert - I agree that tooling around with Facebook or Twitter does not an expert make, but really, does it matter if someone says they are an expert but do not meet your strict definition? I have seen so many posts on this it is getting tiresome. They always seem to come to the conclusion that the only social media expert is the author of the post explaining why everyone else is not. Here is a clue, if you have bash everyone else to get ahead then you likely need to work on your own messaging.

Retweeting praise about yourself – You wouldn’t go into a room and say “hey folks, Jake just said this really nice compliment about me, listen up!” would you? So why would you retweet a compliment instead of just saying thanks? I am all about the self promotion but I think there is something a little over the top about retweeting praise. For other people, cool, for yourself .. not so much.

Direct message and @reply spam – I follow people who interact with me, but not if I go to your twitter stream and see you sent the exact same message to a million other people.

Viral games that spam you with @replies and direct messages - One of the reasons I do not like Facebook much is all the silly stuff and “invitations” to stuff I am not interested in, please do not soil Twitter with this too!

Hash tag hijacking – When I follow a hashtag about a conference, I am not too excited to see random unrelated stuff just because the Twitter user thinks they will get more exposure that way.

Good points there, Chris. I’m in total agreement with all of them. If I may add a bugbear or two of my own with reference to your Twitter-based 3rd point above.

On one level, I don’t automatically follow everyone who follows me – for my own sanity and because there has to be a value exchange. That means NO SPAM. PS: And don’t follow me simply because I’ve used a word that your follow-bot has picked up out of context. You won’t get followed back.

On another level, if I’ve taken the time to follow you, don’t send me an automated reply. I take the time to write an individual reply to those people who follow me with the sincere intent of creating conversation. Is it too much to expect the same in return?

You have hit the nail on the head with Facebook. It is so childish, those little games. On my personal Facebook page I’m looking at about 30 (or more) of those I haven’t answered, and won’t answer because I refuse to play games like that.

@Amod Munga I agree those automated follow bots are a huge irritation. But since I don’t follow back automatically, it’s kind of fun every now and then to throw out a keyword to see how many will come in on it. Just as an experiment of course. :)

One I would add -companies that disguise their spam by giving away prizes to people who drop their name. Moonfruit really set me off on this a few weeks ago. Just because you’re not sending it directly, doesn’t make it not spam.

When we were kids, we shared praise and compliments with everyone and other kids shared in our joy. I’m not sure why as adults we’ve lost that sense of innocence. Why can’t we enjoy another person’s excitement about someone giving them good feedback or praise.

I agree that self-promotion can be over the top and thanks should be given. I personally don’t RT praise I receive yet I don’t care if others RT their praise. I ususally will reply back with “Congratulations” or “Kudos To You.” I work hard on sharing their sense of joy with them instead of seeing it as a negative.

@Ray – Repeat once or twice for different timezones, I find that ok – but all day, then it is just annoying :)

@Sue – Yes auto follow really bites when people find you through keywords. Thankfully I do not autofollow but do get caught out because I follow anyone who interacts with me and sometimes these spammers bots are realistic ;)

@Alex – Competitions can be fun, I did one myself, but it really gets to me when people write random, offtopic tweets then stick the hashtag on it just to get prize credit

@Jon – Heh, yeah, and the follower count updates too!

@Jonfreeze – I have to admit, I have been chatty in Twitter myself :S

@Jeff – Strange, we didn’t do that as kids and I don’t think my daughter does … Perhaps a cultural difference thing?

Hi Chris
Thanks for allowing this gripefest!
Besides porn/bot/get rich scamsters, the most irritating thing after following someone, is to get a DM that has an ‘over-familiar’ message!
Arrgh!
End of rant! :)
Cheers
Anita Lobo

Simply I agree… but that’s not all that gets under my skin nowadays … I’ve stopped reading RSS feeds for a long time, and I may be the only one in the world who’s feeling this way, but after getting my RSS reader going again -> I can’t believe people are still publishing posts about how to blog better ….

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